2 cups pork stock — I get it from when I make pork loins in the crock pot, but you can buy stock if you like, or use beef stock if you don’t do pork
2 Tbsp flour to thicken it

1/2 a medium white onion, chopped
2 Tbsp olive oil
1 container of fresh sliced mushrooms — one of those boxes that you can get at the supermarket in the produce aisle
1 bundle of chard, collard greens, turnip greens or some kind of dark, slightly bitter green — washed, stem and center vein removed, and cut into pieces about the side of your hand

Don’t use canned anything if you can at all avoid it. Canned vegetables are gorilla phlegm. I’m serious.

Directions:
Directions for the spaetzle can be found here. Drain them and set them aside in a bowl while you do the following, and toss it occasionally to keep them from sticking to each other.

Heat up the pork stock in a small saucepan and whisk the 2 Tbsp of flour in it to thicken it up. A good way to do this and not get lumps is to mash up the flour in a teacup with a few tablespoons of stock until you have a smooth paste, then add the paste to the rest of the stock in the saucepan and moosh it up.

Get the biggest frying pan you have (no, bigger) with deep sides, and saute the chopped onion in the olive oil on medium heat. When it’s tender, add the mushrooms and saute them. When they’re tender, add the chard, stir the whole thing up, and let it fry for a few minutes.

Add the spaetzle. Stir it up so that the spaetzle is on the bottom and covered with the mushrooms and chard; that helps it saute a bit.

After about two minutes of idle stirring and sizzling, add the thickened pork stock and stir. Let this heat together for about a minute, stirring.

Turn off the heat, dump some into a bowl, and chow down.

Yummy Spaetzle and Chard being sauted in pork jus with onions and mushrooms

This also saves and re-heats for lunch again really well. And you could probably stretch meat nicely with it. I might throw in some shredded pork or even, despite the fact that it’s made with pork gravy, a piece of shredded baked chicken breast.

Gonna try it this weekend. Check out the “recipe” tag at the right for the spaetzle recipe. Gonna replace an egg with an equivalent amount of honey, replace the spice with cinnamon, then stew some apples, and dump the spaetzle over top with a spoonful of double Devon cream and see how it goes.

Will report back this weekend. Recipe forthcoming if it works out. If it does, the next one I try will probably be ginger spaetzle with stewed blueberries and lemon curd.

Minus the oil for frying, moosh it all up together in a bowl, knead it until smooth, wrap it in cling film, and let it sit in the fridge for about 15mins.

Start heating the oil on medium.

Take out the cool dough ball and cut off a piece about the size of a lemon. Roll it out to the thickness of about a pinky finger, and cut pieces off the end with a sharp knife about the size of a chickpea. Do that to the whole ball of dough, then dump them by batches into the now-hot oil. They will fry up and turn golden in about a minute; they cook fast. Also, you will need to sieve them periodically and poke them with a knife as they cook and make sure they aren’t stuck together. Because they have shredded cheese in them, they can stick together where the cheese has melted on each little ball’s surface. It’s not tragic if they do; you can break them apart easily after they cool.

Sieve them out and let them drain/cool on paper towels.

Put them in a container, salt to taste (you shouldn’t need any more salt, really), put the lid on the container, and shake.

Put them in front of a gang of people and back off, keeping your hands and feet away from their mouths. You may hear a sonic boom.

I’ll post a picture once I get my hands on a little card-reader thing to get the pic into the computer.

Seriously. These things are GOOD. They’d be awesome tossed into a bowl of chili.

BTW, you probably won’t want to reuse the cooking oil, just because these things have pepper flakes in them, which will flavor the oil too noticeably for the next use.

Directions:
1. Mix together flour, salt, white pepper, and nutmeg. Beat eggs well, and add alternately with the milk to the dry ingredients. Mix until smooth.
2. Press dough through spaetzle maker into boiling water or broth. Here’s a video of someone doing it; it’s pretty bombproof. The actual making part starts around 2:25 in.
3. Cook 3 to 4 minutes (at the most). Strain out when they float. Drain well.
4. Saute cooked spaetzle in butter or margarine. Sprinkle chopped fresh parsley on top, and serve.

I have a feeling I’m going to wind up covering them in some fresh cheese and some gravy made from the leftover pork jus from the pork loin I made a while back. Sort of poutine with spaetzle. And with Indian fresh cheese. So sort of an Indian-French-Canadian-German sort of um, thing.

It would probably be nice in a cream sauce with some chopped asparagus and scallops, too. Or sauteed in olive oil instead of butter with some onions and collard greens with chopped bacon.

And I wonder if there are any sweet recipes? There have to be. I mean, this stuff looks like pancake batter.

I should put up the ones I make with eggnog and the Nutella ice cream recipe as well. Those make NICE ice cream sandwiches, too. I used graham crackers broken in half so that they were more square-ish for the Nutella ice cream, and made flat gingerbread cookies of the same shape for the eggnog ice cream.